Video lottery gaming systems use electronic player stations to allow players to purchase lottery tickets and see the results of the purchased lottery tickets. Some of these video lottery systems actually generate the lottery tickets or chances in the game at the individual player stations. Others generate electronic lottery ticket sets at a device remote from the player stations and then transfer electronic tickets to the various player stations in some manner. One particular type of video lottery system stores electronic tickets at a server remote from the individual player stations and transfers an electronic lottery ticket or information from the electronic lottery ticket to a player station only upon receipt of a game play request from the player station. This type of video lottery system is commonly referred to as a “central determinant” lottery system. U.S. Pat. No. 6,733,385 describes one such “central determinant” lottery system.
The lottery ticket server in a central determinant lottery system must keep lottery ticket sets available to satisfy incoming game play requests from the various player stations supported by the lottery ticket server. When only a single lottery game is available in the gaming system and that game uses a single set of electronic lottery tickets, it is a relatively simple matter to store a stock of electronic lottery tickets for that game at the server from which to assign tickets for incoming game play requests. However, some lottery systems offer multiple lottery games and each lottery game may require a different set of lottery tickets. Further, some lottery games require multiple sets of lottery tickets. To accommodate multiple lottery games requiring different lottery ticket sets and/or single lottery games played with multiple ticket sets, the ticket server of the central determinant system must maintain multiple lottery ticket sets available to satisfy incoming game play requests. This task of maintaining lottery ticket set availability becomes more and more burdensome as the number of required electronic lottery tickets sets increases. The problem is exacerbated when a central determinant system supplies electronic lottery tickets for different game providers at a single gaming facility/casino because each game provider may require its own sets of lottery tickets for satisfying game play requests from its player stations. Where the central determinant system must support numerous different lottery games and numerous different game providers, the system must be capable of storing a very large number of electronic ticket sets that must be kept readily available to quickly satisfy game play requests from the various player stations.